Global Access & Health

Management Approach

Throughout our nearly 150-year history, Lilly has pioneered many life-changing medicines – including insulin, which has helped make diabetes a manageable disease; penicillin, which greatly reduced deaths from infection; fluoxetine, which revolutionized depression care; and COVID-19 treatments, which provided additional tools in the fight against the global pandemic. Today, over 51 million people use Lilly’s medicines.

Lilly employees from across the globe come together from diverse backgrounds to harness the power of biotechnology and aim to bring relief to millions of people with serious illnesses. We invest in innovation that helps solve some of the world’s most significant health challenges.

But we know that our commitment to patients and society goes beyond the medicines we make.

We are deeply committed to equitable and affordable access to our medicines so that our breakthrough medicines can transform more people’s lives. We’re also committed to expanding our impact on society by addressing complex global health challenges, with a focus on people living in communities with limited resources.

Reaching beyond industry boundaries, we collaborate with leading partners to reach more people and help them feel better in their daily lives. Our collective work benefits individual patients and the entire global health system.

Improving Global Access and Health

Beyond developing life-saving medications, we drive strategies to expand access to our medicines and improve quality healthcare globally. We advance collaborative, multisector initiatives to enhance the diagnosis, education, treatment and care of people living with noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) – especially those in historically-marginalized communities in the U.S. and low- and middle-income countries.

The human toll of NCDs is unacceptable, inequitable and increasing. According to the World Health Organization, there are 41 million deaths from NCDs each year, and this number is expected to rise to 52 million by 2030. NCDs including cancer and diabetes are the number one cause of death and disability worldwide. COVID-19 further exacerbated health discrepancies and highlighted an urgent need to act. Lilly’s deep knowledge and expertise in many of these disease areas can help contribute to eliminating the growing burden of NCDs on people around the globe.

Pricing Around the World

We sell medicines in approximately 110 countries around the world. Each country values medications and innovation differently, and each must balance competing demands for finite resources, including other health care products and services, as well as meeting other social needs, such as education or infrastructure.

At Lilly, we consider country-specific conditions when pricing medicines on a market-by-market basis to help ensure patients have affordable access to the innovative medications we develop. We support public policies to meet this same end. We strive to price our medicines to enable affordable access for appropriate patients, reflecting the value provided to patients, providers, payers, caregivers, the health system and society as a whole.

We explore new pricing and reimbursement models in different markets, and we advocate for policy changes that help increase access to medicines while protecting innovation and enabling development of new medicines. For example, we support value-based and outcomes-based reimbursement models that can deliver greater health and economic value to health systems.

As a global company, we are aware that patients in lower-income countries face economic circumstances that limit their ability to pay for medicines and health care. In response, Lilly is deploying alternative business models and innovative collaborations to help provide high-quality, affordable products for these markets. We also support efforts to decrease the final price of medicines to patients in these countries, such as minimizing out-of-pocket costs for patients and limiting markups across the supply chain.

Lilly 30x30

Through investments in people, medicines and health systems, we strive to improve access to quality health care for 30 million people living in settings with limited resources annually by 2030. We call this global effort Lilly 30x30. To achieve our goal, we are leveraging the company’s resources and collaborating with leading health organizations to increase access to Lilly medicines and address complex global health challenges. We work to enhance health across three areas of impact:

Pipeline – discovering medicines, repurposing internal assets and supporting external pipelines

Programs – strengthening and creating new programs that help improve access to Lilly medicines

Partnerships – building partnerships that strengthen health systems, increase access to medicines and improve care.

In each of these areas, we are working to develop high-impact, scalable solutions for people living in communities with limited resources.

Governance of Lilly 30x30

To embed accountability throughout the company, Lilly 30x30 is governed by a steering committee of 13 senior executives, including seven Executive Committee members and the head of Social Impact. Reporting to the CEO, this committee oversees management of key priorities and operational milestones to measure our progress and ensures the Lilly 30x30 program is strategically aligned with our business and core purpose of making life better.

As a biopharmaceutical company, our greatest contribution to global health is the discovery and development of innovative medicines.

In 2022, we continued to explore and engage with external organizations with the goal of developing innovative solutions for diseases disproportionately affecting people living in settings with limited resources. In 2023, we are launching a new process to systematically evaluate late-phase assets for Lilly 30x30 to devise product development and access planning strategies for low- and middle-income countries. We will continue to explore potential opportunities and business development models that further support the development of our Lilly 30x30 pipeline, including venture impact investing.

Drug Development and Repurposing
Not every Lilly scientific discovery will go on to become a marketed medicine, but some could still yield value in other ways. For example, in response to the coronavirus pandemic, our Lilly 30x30 drug repurposing efforts uncovered an antibody previously studied in cancer that could be evaluated against new disease targets. Other examples include:

Lilly Collaboration with NIDA - Lilly has entered into a collaboration with NIDA to explore the potential of some early-phase therapies that might be repurposed for the treatment of opioid use disorder. Although there are three drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of opioid dependence, misuse of opioids remains a significant public health concern, and there is a high unmet need to develop new and effective treatments for opioid and other addictive disorders. Opioid and other addictive disorders disproportionately affect people with limited resources.

Lilly has provided NIDA with samples of four specific molecules that we initially studied for psychiatric disorders and diabetes. There is evidence to suggest these investigational therapies may hold the potential for other indications. Lilly’s own initial data, along with scientific review literature, show that these molecules may have effects on the brain-reward pathway by decreasing anxiety, improving mood, increasing satiation or dampening the rewarding effects of drugs of abuse.

Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Action Fund - In 2020, the Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Action Fund was launched in 2020 by over 20 leading biopharmaceutical companies, including Lilly. Joining forces with global charitable organizations and development banks, the AMR Action Fund aims to accelerate antibiotic development with the goal to deliver two to four new antibiotics by 2030. To launch the AMR Action Fund, Lilly loaned one of our finance executives to serve as interim CEO, underscoring our commitment to strengthening and accelerating antibiotic development. Lilly continues to be a top-tier investor, with $100 million commitment over the life of the Fund.

In 2022, the AMR Action Fund announced its first investments in Adaptive Phage Therapeutics and Venatorx Pharmaceuticals, each with pipelines targeting a range of infections.

Through Lilly 30x30, we are strengthening our existing programs and developing new approaches to improve access to Lilly products and services for people living in settings with limited resources. These efforts include exploring alternative business models and expanding access strategies and patient support programs.

Patient Support Programs
Lilly offers a variety of affordability solutions through patient support programs and copay assistance across the major products of our portfolio, including medicines for diabetes, migraine, immunology diseases and cancer. We offer these programs across 40 countries that reach nearly 2 million people annually.

Our patient support programs fall into three categories:

supporting patients through reimbursement and product access issues

answering questions related to living with disease and managing health

providing information on Lilly medicines and training on Lilly devices.

Alternative Access Programs
Lilly offers alternative access programs in addition to standard pricing, reimbursement and access models. Our alternative programs facilitate appropriate patient access to Lilly medicines by addressing specific challenges faced by institutional payers, patients or channel partners.

We are also exploring manufacturing and public-private partnership-based solutions to expand access to our products in the countries where Lilly currently has no or limited presence.

For example, in late 2022, Lilly announced a new collaboration with EVA Pharma to enhance sustainable access to affordable human and analog insulin in Africa with the goal of reaching at least 1 million people living with diabetes in low- and middle-income countries by 2030. Lilly will supply active pharmaceutical ingredient for insulin at a significantly reduced price and provide technology transfer to enable EVA Pharma to manufacture and supply insulin to many lower-middle income countries, most of which are in Africa. EVA Pharma expects to begin distribution of the Africa-manufactured insulin products within 18 months.

Through strategic partnerships and collaborations, Lilly and the Lilly Foundation work to strengthen local health care systems and improve access to care. In conjunction with other organizations, Lilly uses its technology and expertise to find innovative, sustainable, and scalable solutions to help address pressing global health concerns, especially diabetes care. We work to establish cross-industry collaborations and develop and test models of care to reach as many people as possible.

Through our partnerships, we share data and lessons learned to help inform policy and advocate for the scale-up and replication of proven, cost-effective solutions.

article-inline-image-global-health-partnership 2022 R1.3

*Funded by the Lilly Foundation, a separate tax-exempt organization that provides strategic and philanthropic support to other qualifying tax-exempt organizations consistent with Lilly’s general philanthropic objectives.

AMPATH – Academic Model Providing Access to Healthcare

NCD – Noncommunicable Disease

See more details about our partners and the work we support.

Multi-Stakeholder Collaborations to Advance the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals

We are members of several multi-stakeholder collaborations focused on tackling global health challenges, including:

Access Accelerated (AA) – A collective of leading life science companies working to advance action against noncommunicable diseases (NCDs).

NCD Alliance – A global thought leader on policy and practice related to NCDs.
Coalition for Access to NCD Medicines & Products – A global, multisectoral coalition dedicated to increasing access to medicines and health products for NCDs to reduce the impact of diseases such as diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular disease.
Access to Oncology Medicines Coalition (ATOM)– A global initiative to improve access to essential cancer medicines and increase the capacity to use these medicines appropriately in low-and lower-middle-income countries.

Product Contributions

In 2022, Lilly and its affiliates provided more than $3.7 billion in medicines to charitable organizations that offer free Lilly medicines to qualifying patients.* These efforts include product contributions used by third parties for patient assistance programs and humanitarian efforts, and Lilly’s support of Life for a Child and AMPATH, noted above. Other examples include:

Lilly Cares® Foundation Patient Assistance Program – Lilly donates medications to the Lilly Cares Foundation, a separate nonprofit organization. Lilly Cares' Patient Assistance Program provides qualifying patients in the U.S. with significant financial need prescribed Lilly medications at no cost. In 2022, Lilly Cares helped more than 217,000 people obtain prescribed medications across the therapeutic areas of diabetes, immunology, neuroscience, cancer, pain, endocrinology, cardiovascular and bone, muscle and joint. Over the past 20 years, Lilly Cares has helped more than 1 million patients with financial need receive medicines donated by Lilly.
Collaboration with Relief Agencies – To help increase access to insulins, we announced in early 2020 that we would donate at least 200,000 KwikPens® to Direct Relief, Americares and Dispensary of Hope to stock insulin at nearly 300 U.S. free clinics through 2022.These donations, now complete, directly supported people with limited resources living with diabetes who qualify for free clinic services. Separately, Lilly also donated $2 million to fund grants available through two relief organizations: Direct Relief and Americares. These agencies distributed grant funds to a wide range of eligible free clinics to increase access in underserved communities. Learn more about both contributions.

*Includes value of Lilly medicines provided to separate charitable organizations that offer free Lilly medicines to qualifying patients. Products valued at wholesale acquisition cost.

Global Health Highlights

1 Includes value of medicines provided by Lilly to separate charitable organizations that offer free Lilly medicines to qualifying patients. Product donations valued at wholesale acquisition cost.

2 Includes financial commitments from Lilly and $13.6 million from the Eli Lilly and Company Foundation, a separate nonprofit organization, commonly referred to as the Lilly Foundation.